[Very special thanks to
Chuck Ellis, John Burke, Los Cucharachos, German Correa Senior and
the entire Correa family.]
There is an old saying that says if you come to San Miguel, and
you don’t visit La Parroquia and you don’t visit La
Cucaracha, then you didn’t visit San Miguel. It has been called
the most famous cantina in the world. San Miguel’s own “Cuke”
has been a worldwide destination watering hole for over fifty years.
At one point in time it was rated by Esquire magazine to be one
of the 10 best expatriate bars in the world. And now in its sixth
decade of existence, La Cuca has not lost any of its discrete charm
or genuine personality.
 First
opened in August, 1947, the bar originally stood where Banamex presently
sits, on the northeast corner of the Jardin. (Can you even imagine?!)
The bar was immediately popular with local Mexicans and North American
expatriates alike. Many American World War II and Korean War veterans
found their way to San Miguel riding on checks from the G.I. Bill.
They enrolled at the Instituto Allende (and on occasion, some of
them even went to class) and spent much of their days commiserating
and cajoling with old friends over drinks at La Cuca.
The barkeep, founder and owner then was Don Jesus “Chucho”
Correa. The Correa family pretty much brought nightlife to San Miguel.
At the time they owned four “nocturnal entertainment centers”
including: La Cuca, Escondido, Los Topos y La Princesa. But until
La Cuca opened, there was not a cantina like it in San Miguel or
in all of Mexico. You see, there are cantinas, and there are cantinas.
And much like Major League Baseball, there are distinct divisions
or classes among cantinas. And La Cuca was the first “top-tier”
(think Triple-AAA) cantina of its kind. Both women and men could
frequent the Cuke, and women were treated with the utmost respect
in those days.
All those who had the pleasure and honor of being served by him
considered Don Chucho “the saint of all saloon keepers”.
He never discriminated or refused a drink to anyone. According to
Chuck Ellis’s 1990 memoir: “His approach to business
was so innocent it succeeded profanely. He poured the best belt
in town, charged cantina prices, ran liberal tabs and was himself,
warm, honest and generous to a fault. He would suffer no one to
go thirsty.”
 Many
of the aspiring writers and artists that walked through those swinging
cantina doors and ran up tabs went on to achieve success and some
of them even fame. Some were just wanna-bees who talked a big game,
but never really amounted to much. But Don Chucho served them all
and treated them equally with the same amount of respect. It was
common for regulars at La Cuca to run up tabs that were never checked
for accuracy, as it was unthinkable there might be an overcharge.
Don Chucho was not only known for his generosity, but also for his
transparent honestly.
San Miguel was still a true art colony then (as opposed to the canned-art,
dog-and-formaldehyde-pony-show it has become, where even the stool
you sit on has its price) and there was something about the town
that appealed to interesting characters. Ellis wrote, “From
the beginning its tables would be peopled with frustrated word slingers
and paint pushers, with moody thinkers and charming survival artists,
with remittance men, and with a coterie of old soldiers.”
And there was a litany of war veterans in those days, most of them
living out their pensions and soothing their old battle scars with
Don Chucho’s refreshing liquid anesthetic.
These American soldiers would become Don Chucho’s great friends
and admirers over the years and throughout the golden age of La
Cucaracha in the 1950’s and 60’s when films, both Mexican
and American, were being made in our picturesque colonial town.
People today get all star-struck when they hear that Antonio Banderas
and Johnny Depp are lurking about our calles. But back in the day,
we had some REAL stars of the silver screen. The likes of Robert
Mitchum, Charles Laughton, Kim Novak, Anthony Quinn and Rita Hayworth
used to grace the vaunted Cucaracha. According to John Burke, Novak
would put her feet up on the bar as she gulped down a tall stiff
one.
Ellis recounts: “Chucho, not your average saloon keeper, never
had his picture taken with a star, never had a star’s autographed
picture hung on the wall. The only memento he had of those days
was three holes in the ceiling shot there by a drunk who had grabbed
the pistol from Mitchum’s bodyguard.”
 Other
notable literary regulars were: Charlie Portis, author of “True
Grit,” a minor masterpiece he wrote under the influence of
Chucho’s high-octane pourings; Irving Stone (“Lust for
Life”), Willard “Butch” Marsh (“Week With
No Friday”), Tory Thompson (“Halfway Down the Stairs”)
Gary Jennings (“Aztec”) and the noted Canadian columnist
Paul Rimstead. Walter Trevis once got the entire house sloshed on
his own tab, “Set ‘em up from the Caballeros (men’s
room) to the calle!” Ellis recalls him proclaiming with a
grin. He had just sold his pool-shooting book, “The Hustler”,
to Hollywood.
Cartoonists such as Bert Voorhees and Charles Addams were often
found at the bar of La Cuca, and Shel Silverstein was reported to
be around briefly. But it was Canadian artist Bernie McLoughlin
who did the cartoons that still adorn the walls above the bar.
In October of 1978 La Cucaracha fell out of favor with some town
officials and was suddenly considered too unseemly for such a historic
location (some say the forced relocation was the result of fatal
shooting that occurred there) and would be forever exiled from the
Jardin. So on December 12, 1978, Don Chucho reopened the bar at
its present location on Zacateros #22. Things changed when La Cuca
switched locations. For a time, La Cuca became less international
and you saw less of the old gringo’s that used to hang around.
It became a more local, Mexican hangout. San Miguel itself changed
very much in those years. According to Ellis, “the unbreakable
convention of San Miguel writers not to write about the town was
finally broken. And then came the flood. San Miguel became a North-American
retirement center, a Mecca of the culture vulture class of retirees—the
men mostly wanting to relax with pipe and book after a lifetime
of work, the women hot to do what they’d always wanted to,
to paint and pot and write and act in amateur plays, to attend concerts
and poetry readings—fine people surely, but not Cucaracha
people.”
 The
town grew and prospered as rents doubled, tripled, quadrupled. And
as my friend Clark Spicer puts it, “Writers and painters went
to Bangkok instead, where you could still get two beers for a quarter.”
Ellis further recounts: “The movie stars were gone. The writers
and painters and raconteurs were gone. The old soldiers were too
old now to raise hell the way they once did, and if Chucho regretted
that his old friends didn’t come around as often as they used
to he never expressed it. Chucho served broken-shoed campesinos
who did not know how not to spit on the floor with the same courtesy
as the glitterati of other days. In Chucho’s bar one man was
as good as the next. It has always been that way.”
Ellis would continue: “As the 1980’s progressed Chucho
slowed down. He was still the best domino player in town. And he
had a good crowd of Mexicans, “Los Cucarachos” as they
called themselves (and still do), many of them dating back to the
Jardin. But he didn’t laugh as much as he used to. He couldn’t
drink—his liver simply refused to process the stuff anymore.
He sat quietly now, thinking his own thoughts, burning his daily
two or three packs of Delicados, extending credit generously, suffering
no one to go thirsty.”
 Don
Jesus “Chucho” Correa died on February 22, 1990 at age
67 of cirrhosis of the liver. A packed house of stunned faces filled
the Las Monjas church and a long procession drove down Zacateros,
past the closed bar and to the graveyard. Ellis wrote, “His
death is the loss of a unique man. And the end of an era in San
Miguel.”
One of the great traditions that began at the new location on Zacateros
was the botanas (snacks) Thursdays. What began as a simple, complimentary
snack served to patrons over dominos and drinks, has become a bonafide
La Cuca ritual. Every Thursday the oldest and most revered customers,
men known as “Los Cucarachos”, converge at La Cuca to
rehash old times, play some small stakes dominos and enjoy each
other’s company. The Correa family supplies the deliciously
home cooked food—free of charge! The offering has actually
evolved beyond merely botanas into a full-on dinner. The hot meal
is generously prepared by various members of the Correa family and
is brought from their home and served to their grateful customers
around 6:00pm. Everyone is welcome to the free meal—even those
who cannot afford to buy a drink. It is probably one of the most
genuine and authentic San Miguel moments I’ve ever had the
pleasure of experiencing. You can almost feel Don Chucho’s
kind and philanthropic spirit smiling down upon the proceedings.
It’s truly a beautiful event to behold.
La Cucaracha, like everything in our culture, goes through cycles,
fading in and out of popularity. But what has not faded over the
years is Don Chucho Correa’s universal philosophy of a bar
open and welcome to everyone. One of the first things that struck
me about La Cucaracha when I came to San Miguel was the great diversity
among its clientele. You had a mixture of every race, culture, social-economic
standing, sex and sexual preference: You had poor campesinos, middle
class students, rich “fresa” kids from D.F., and East
L.A. cholos. You had slumming hippies, middle-aged gay artists and
writers, and an older, sometimes wealthy, assortment of retirees.
All mixed together in a perfectly harmonious hodgepodge of a social
experiment. And of course, wherever there’s alcohol, there’s
always the possibility of an occasional fight, someone trying to
test someone else’s limits. There are nights in La Cuca, where
you can cut the tension in the air with a butter knife and you just
know there’s going to be a fight tonight. But there are other
nights (like two Tuesdays ago, for example) when you feel nothing
but good vibes from La Cuca, everybody is loving each other, and
you get a small taste of what it must have been like so many years
ago.
[Very special thanks to Chuck Ellis, John Burke, Los Cucharachos,
German Correa Senior and the entire Correa family.]
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